


come home

by quidhitch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, just boyfriends acting like husbands, nursey gets mugged but it's not like described and his injuries are rlly mild so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 04:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8313226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quidhitch/pseuds/quidhitch
Summary: 7:47Dex gets the call in the middle of a nap and despite seeing the ridiculous shirtless selfie  of Nursey in Ransom’s white Snapback flash across his screen, he answers the call, mumbling a bleary and vaguely frustrated “hello?” into the mouthpiece. If this is another rant about Jeff Bezos, he swears to fucking god–“Uh… hey, Will.”Will?





	

**7:47**

Dex gets the call in the middle of a nap and despite seeing the ridiculous shirtless selfie Nursey took in Ransom’s white Snapback flash across his screen, he answers the call, mumbling a bleary and vaguely frustrated “hello?” into the mouthpiece. If this is another rant about Jeff Bezos, he swears to _fucking_ god–

“Uh... hey, Will.”

_Will?_

Dex feels consciousness start to slip into his body, worry growing in the pit of his stomach at the silence on the other end of the line. He can hear his roommate mumbling something along the lines of ‘take it outside, Poindexter’.

“Nursey?” Dex asks, rubbing a hand over his face and swinging his legs out of bed. More silence. Dex pushes himself out of bed and pads out into the hallway, trying to keep his voice to a whisper despite his worries. “Nursey? Derek, come on. What’s wrong?”

“I, um. I got mugged?”

Dex’s heart drops to the bottom of his toes, and for a second all he can hear is a dull kind of roar in his ears. He had a temper like this in high school, when the wrong type of guy would mess with one of his sisters or pick on the captain of the robotics club. It never really made an appearance at Samwell until now.

“Where are you? Are you okay?” Dex has completely given up on whispering, and hopes to God he doesn’t sound like some sort of overbearing father barking into a cellphone.

“I’m fine,” there’s a little tremble to Nursey’s voice that makes Dex think otherwise, “they got a couple punches in but. I’ve faced worse on the ice.”

“Where are you right now, Derek?” Will repeats, his pulse a jackhammer at the crook of his neck.

“I’m a couple blocks away from where it happened. They – they took my phone, so I needed a payphone, and... I’m sorry I called, I didn’t know what to do. My parents are in Hilo. I didn’t know who else–“

Dex remembers this – knows that Nursey only calls his parents once a month, and while their conversations seem amicable enough, it’s nothing like when Dex’s mom calls him and listens to her gush about her sustainable farming class and the possibly gay instructor for hours on end. It’s always squicked Dex out a bit, but he never realized how horrible the whole thing was until that moment.

“It’s fine,” Dex cuts in, and he’s already heading back into his room and switching on the light, much to his roommate’s chagrin, pulling a sweatshirt on and stuffing random things from his closet into a duffle bag. “Tell me the street, and I’ll send you an Uber back to your apartment. If you think you’re gonna fall asleep, tuck a key somewhere so I can let myself in.”

“Will, you don’t have to–“

“Do you want me to?”

“…Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll be there. Three and a half hours, okay?” He hesitates, at the threshold of his dormitory door, the ball of anxiety in his chest tightening at the sound of Nursey’s breath getting ragged on the other end of the line. “Everything’s going to be okay. Stay on the phone with me until the Uber gets there, okay? Then call me back from your home phone.”

“Don’t talk and drive,” Nursey mumbles. He sounds cold – can people sound cold?

“Bluetooth, asshole,” Dex shoots back, breaking into a jog down the dormitory stairs and to the parking lot, “now, what’s your address?”

**9:13**

“Do you… I mean, do you want to go to the police station?” Dex asks, after a while. “If you do, the sooner the better.”

“Nah,” Nursey mumbles, and Dex wants to protest but he keeps his mouth shut for a minute. “It’s New York, right? The chances they actually catch the guy are slim to none. Besides, all he took is twenty bucks I had in my pocket and my phone. Already ordered a new one from Apple, so.”

Dex nods before he remembers Nursey isn’t actually in the car with him. “Okay. If you’re sure. We can always go tomorrow if you change your mind.” Nursey makes some sort of humming noise on the other end of the line.

They don’t talk after that, not really. Dex can hear the sounds of Nursey making himself food – the rustle of plastic, the beep of a microwave. He can hear Nursey tucking himself into a couch, and the sounds of his favorite movie (Pride and Prejudice 2005) playing in the foreground.

Sometimes Nursey will take a breath and say something like “is putting a frozen steak against my lip a violation of veganism?” And Dex will be caught between laughing and having an anxiety attack.

In the silent betweens he thinks about tucking Nursey’s curls beneath his beanie, about drawing butts on his forehead while he sleeps, about walking to morning practice together side by side, the backs of their hands brushing in a way that feels all too deliberate.

He loves him so much. So, so _, so_ much. It’s the absolute worst feeling in the world.

**12:22**

Of course Nursey lives in disgustingly fancy building that looks like what Dex would imagine space hotels are going to look like in the distant future. Dex normally would’ve rolled his eyes at the fact the just had to tell the doorman he was there to see Derek Nurse and he’d be let in, but Nursey told him the information in such a small, vulnerable voice that he couldn’t muster up the irritation.

One spell of terrible elevator music and two wrong stops later – honestly, the font in which these numbers are written is truly ridiculous – Dex is pretty sure he’s standing in front of Nursey’s door. He reaches up to knock but it swings open before he gets the chance, and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Nursey cuts in, silencing whatever expletive was on the tip of Dex’s tongue, “Bradley told me you were here, I…” He trails off. They stare at each other for a second.

“Welcome to Casa Nurse?” Nursey asks. He’s still holding frozen meat over his face, and there’s a bruise over his cheekbone that makes Dex want to punch someone, but he’s _there_. He’s okay. He looks warm and beautiful in stretched out blue Henley and sweatpants that Dex is pretty sure are Ransom’s.

He pulls him into a hug without even thinking about it, arms coming to rest very carefully around Nursey’s waist in case there are bruises, in case this is weird for them – as cuddly as Nursey is, they are crossing a lot of weird interpersonal boundaries tonight, maybe he should –

But before he can even think it, Nursey is burying his face into Dex’s shoulder and full on shivering, his fingers already starting to curl in the back of his jacket. It’s like watching a dam break.

“I didn’t see them coming, I didn’t think they were–“

“You’ve gotta be more careful,” Dex says quietly, rubbing circles on the back of Nursey’s neck with his thumb.

Nursey pulls back for a second and sniffs, still in the circle of Nursey’s arms. The way they’re looking at each other, in the doorway of Nursey’s gazillion dollar apartment… it feels like they’re more than they are. It’s dangerous. Dex can’t bring himself to back away from it.

“You don’t think it’s stupid, right? That I called you? That I didn’t know what to do?”

Dex offers a small, sad smile. He brushes a tear from beneath Nursey’s eye in a gesture that could not even remotely be perceived as platonic, even from people like Ransom and Holster. “I’m really glad you called. Invite me inside, dipshit. Didn’t stop for McDonalds on the way back, you better have something other than fair trade quinoa in that fridge.”

**1:05**

They watch the rest of _Emma_ – apparently the Nurses have a full DVD collection of every period movie ever made, which Dex would chirp Nursey relentlessly for if he didn’t notice the way Keira Knightley twirling on the screen in a hoop skirt put him at ease like nothing else – before Nursey hops in the shower.

The second Dex hears the water running he pulls his phone out of his pocket and punches in his mom’s number.

It’s four rings until she picks up, and the mere sound of her voice asking “oh, sweetie, it’s so late – are you alright?” quells the slight quiver in Dex’s hand.

“Hey mom,” he says softly, picking at a thread on his sweatpants, “I’m fine… I just. I had kind of a crazy night.”

Dex can hear the sounds of her slipping out of bed (his father grumbles something intelligible in the background) and closing the bedroom door behind her. “Crazy night? That’s all I get?”

Dex takes a deep breath. “You remember my.. uh. My friend? Derek? I call him Nursey.”

“Of course I remember Derek, you talk about him all the—“

“Anyways,” Dex cuts off, the tips of his ears red, “he got mugged tonight.” Dex can hear his mom’s tiny gasp on the other end of the line, and his heart inexplicably swells with affection for her. “He didn’t really know who else to call, so I drove up here–“

“-you’re in _New York_?”

Dex hesitates. “Uh…yeah.”

There’s a pause, and he braces himself for a lecture about being reckless and impulsive and putting his friends before his education like always, but it doesn’t come. It takes Dex a moment to remember that’s the speech dad would give.

“His parents?” she asks quietly.

“Out of town. I don’t think they’re close.”

“So he called you,” she muses, and Dex is once again reminded that she is not his father, she’s his mother, which means he knows exactly where she’s going with this line of conversation and he does not like it at all.

“Mom–“

“—I’m just saying, sweetie. He called you and you came.”

“He’s my friend, mom,” had it really truly been necessary to come out to his mom last December? He hates Past Dex more and more every day, “there’s nothing– he would never—“

“It’s a four-hour drive, Will. That’s an awful lot of dedication to a guy you complain to me about at least twenty minutes every day. You always did have trouble expressing affection. Remember Johnny Mosakowski in the third grade?”

Groans and rubs a hand over his face, “ _god,_ can we go one day without talking about Johnny Mosakowski from the third grade?”

He misses the sound of the water turning off, completely preoccupied with the fact he’s getting chirped by his own mother at one in the morning, but Nursey coming out of the bathroom half naked with his hair wet is significantly more difficult to not notice.

He freezes when he sees Dex is on the phone and quirks a questioning eyebrow, mouthing the word who? Dex is too distracted by the drop of water running down his chest to answer.

“I’m gonna have to call you tomorrow, mom,” he hears half of what he hopes to god wasn’t ‘use protection’ before he quickly kills the line.

“Weird time to call your mom,” Nursey says, smiling gently at him. He turns around and starts rifling through a pile of clothes in search of what Dex really hopes is a t-shirt.

Dex is once again fixated on a drop of water tracking the line down his spine. He’s still staring when Nursey turns around, pulling a ratty Samwell t-shirt over his shoulders.

“Dex?” Nursey asks, and even though he looks so tired and a little bruised, there’s a glint in his eye that means he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“You’re going to get a cold. It’s important to sufficiently dry yourself,” Dex snaps, pushing himself off the bed and slipping into the bathroom, the sound of Nursey’s laughter trailing behind him.

**1:57**

Dex makes a valiant effort to try to get Nursey to go to sleep, but he lies on the hardwood floor of his freezing apartment for approximately ten minutes before Nursey says –

“But Dex Jeff Bezos really is a piece of shit-“

And Dex has to climb into Nursey’s squishy memory foam mattress just to clap a hand over his mouth before the situation escalates into a full forty-minute rant.

“You’re not going to wrestle with me while I’m wounded,” Nursey pouts, pulling Dex’s hand off his mouth. He doesn’t let go of his wrist, and Dex feels himself start to blush.

“Go to sleep,” he says helplessly.

There’s a moment of silence where all Dex can hear are the cars passing below them and Nursey’s quiet inhale and exhale over his wrist.

“I don’t think I can,” Nursey says carefully, dropping Dex’s hand and sniffling again, “at least… maybe not right now.”

So they don’t go to sleep. Dex wriggles under Nursey’s million thread count sheets and they lie side by side in the dark, knees pressing against each other, Nursey’s breath puffing out over Dex’s nose every so often. They brushed their teeth next to one another in the bathroom thirty minutes ago so Nursey smells like spearmint, with their faces this close together. There was an air of domesticity to it Dex hated and loved at the same time.

They talk about everything. Nursey says he’s sorry he’s so preoccupied with Jeff Bezos all the time and Dex tells him it’s okay. They discuss what to get Chowder for his birthday, and whether or not they should try to throw him a surprise party. Nursey thinks he’d cry, Dex thinks he’s probably right. Nursey remembers all the ridiculous Ikea names of the furniture around his apartment and Dex laughs over his horrible pronunciations. Dex admits the only poetry he has memorized is a piece by Robert Frost he recited for his fifth grade talent show. Nursey tells him Robert Frost is a piece of shit. Dex laughs at that, too.

There’s a long silence that stretches out after that, and for a bit Dex thinks Nursey’s gone to sleep and his eyes start to drift close.

“I hate that… I hate that you were the only one I could think to call,” Nursey says quietly, and Dex’s heart feels so tight in his chest he’s not sure if he’s breathing, “my teammate. I’ve known you for, like, a year and a half. You barely even like me. And you were the one I called.”

There are a thousand things on the tip of Dex’s tongue, but it’s one of those rare moments where he can sense Nursey’s about to tell him something real. It’s strange. So many people think that Nursey wears his heart on his sleeve, that he’s super in touch with his emotions or whatever, but Dex knows for a fact that he tucks away anything he can’t romanticize.

“Sometimes I think I don’t have anyone. Like, when we graduate, who am I gonna call? The girl I met on Tindr the night before? A new co-worker I’ve known for a week?” Dex watches the bob of Nursey’s throat as he swallows, and his fingers itch to reach out and hold his hand. “Why doesn’t anyone want to stay?” He turns his head to look at Dex, and Dex thinks for one devastating second that he’s going to cry. “Am I really that bad?”

“Nursey,” Dex mumbles, and even though he feels so weighed down to the mattress he can’t think about moving for the next century, he manages to slowly shake his head, “you call me. Even if we haven’t talked in months or years, I…” he reaches over and pushes Nursey’s shoulder slightly. “I’m not going to just forget you, asshole.”

When Nursey looks at him, there’s a fragile kind of something in his eyes. Like he might just believe him.

“Yeah?” he asks, reaching out to push Dex back.

Dex rolls over and looks at the glow-up stars stuck all over Nursey’s ceiling. “Yeah.”

**9:36**

Nursey does not, in fact, have anything in his fridge but milk, beer, and fair trade quinoa. Dex knows literally nothing about New York but he wakes up early the next morning and forces himself to get out of bed. He braves the early morning bustle armed with his phone and the data he’s been saving up all month in search of something actually edible.

It’s weird and a couple people ask him for directions because he’s still in his ratty sweats and a t-shirt, but he comes back half an hour later with bagels and coffee.

“You know how long it took to find a normal fucking bagel,” Dex mutters, sliding the hastily wrapped breakfast over to Nursey. Nursey fixes him with an unbearably fond grin, and Dex shies away from it, his cheeks heating up at record time. “All they had was, like, whole wheat oatmeal? And then when I asked for cream cheese they tried to give me Saffron Citrus aioli.”

Nursey’s smile widens. “Damn, you should’ve called. I love saffron citrus aioli.”

“You are the worst person I have ever met in my entire life,” Dex declares, dumping his coffee into a weird chrome mug he finds on the top shelf of the Nurse’s overly fancy kitchen.

They eat in silence for a minute, the only sound the sound of the wrapping paper crinkling around their bagels. Dex looks at Nursey from over the lip of his mug. He’s right, they’ve both sustained worse after games, and he can’t really place the twisting feeling that takes over his gut whenever he looks a little too long at the cut over his eye or the bruise across his cheek.

“Your parents,” Dex starts, and he tries not to think too hard about the way Nursey tenses up. Just from _your parents_. Jesus. “They’re, uh… not around a lot? Over the summer and stuff?”

Nursey’s quiet for a minute, taking his time chewing the last bit of bagel and washing it down with a swig of coffee. “I guess not.” He shrugs, “I’m kind of used to it, though. I see them more now than I did at Andover. They’re just really busy, you know?”

Dex does not know. Freshman year he called his mom twice a day sometimes three if he got a papercut or a bad grade or a guy he thought was cute turned out to be a total asshole. “Sure,” he says, instead of divulging that embarrassing information. He thanks his brain, for the small freebies it allows him.

“So, um. Why did you come home this weekend? If it wasn’t to see them.”

Nursey pauses, then breaks out into a silly half smile that makes Dex want to kiss his dumb face. “You’re going to laugh at me. Or get mad at me.”

“That’s not fair. I’m always laughing at you.”

“Or getting mad at me.”

“Nursey,” Dex repeats, leaning over the island and poking Nursey’s forehead so he looks back up at him. “Come on.”

Nursey sighs and sits back his chair, arms folding over his chest. “I’m up for an award. Submitted some of my work to some writer’s guild last year and received the nomination in the mail a few weeks ago.”

Dex is maybe a little mad. “And you didn’t think to tell anyone?” he asks, irritably, annoyed at Nursey for not letting people enjoy this with him. He wants to say something like ‘how do you expect people to get close to you if you don’t tell them anything’ but that sounds like a line straight out of one of the daytime dramas his mom watches, and this weekend has had too many daytime drama elements as it is.

“I told Shitty,” Nursey admits, and Dex’s stomach twists in jealousy before he can stop it, “he was going to go with me but he got sick last minute. I would’ve told you if I’d won.”

Dex narrows his eyes. “You were just going to go alone tonight?”

“Don’t make it a big deal, man, it’s chill,” Nursey says, crumpling up his bagel wrapper and rising from his stool with a wince. Dex’s hands itch to curl around his forearms and hold him in place for just a second. “Anyways, when are you heading back today?”

Dex watches Nursey throw his garbage away, gather up the mugs from the kitchen counter and start washing them out over the sink. The line across his shoulders is tight, even as he hums some of his terrible indie music under his breath and rakes his hand through his curls a few times. It’s like anyone who didn’t know him would think he was chill.

“Hm,” Dex says, reaching over to take the wet mug from Nursey’s hands and start drying it with one of their ridiculously soft dish towels, “I guess after that lame poetry thing we have tonight.”

He doesn’t look at Nursey when he adds on, “and that’ll probably end late. So more realistically tomorrow morning.”

He can see Nursey’s grin in his periphery, the white flash of his teeth that he tries to hide by looking out the window, and it’s kind of everything.

**7:16**

The sleeves of Nursey’s jacket are a little short on Dex’s arms but Nursey promised him no one would notice. Probably blew that one out of the water seeing that he can’t stop fiddling with them, or taking periodic sips of his water, or doing other awkward things that don’t actually make it look like he understands his place at an event this classy

Nursey had abandoned him with the excuse he had to “make the rounds”, and now he’s alone at their table alone with a very pleasant but stony-faced pair of elderly woman and an old dude who is definitely drunk off his ass. It’s been five minutes since Nursey left and they’ve already talked about middle class free-loaders, cape cod, those little robot things that clean your floors while you’re not home, and a bunch of other rich people things that Dex is pretty sure have caused him to sweat straight through Nursey’s expensive jacket.

There’s a beat of uncomfortable silence at the table before Dex realizes he’s been asked something.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” he says, trying for a charming smile that probably comes out more like a grimace, “could you maybe repeat the question?”

Stony-faced elderly lady number two does not look impressed. “It’s alright. I asked how you knew Derek.”

“We play hockey together,” Dex says, maybe a little too quickly. One of the drunk guy’s eyebrows raises and, come on, seriously? That dude barely remembers how to take a sip of water and he still has the proper consciousness to be judgmental? Of course. “We’re both defense-man for Samwell University.”

“Oh!” says stony faced elderly lady number one. “Samwell’s a lovely school. My grandson goes there, he plays a sport as well. You might know him. Chad Rottenheimer?”

It’s a small blessing that Nursey chooses that moment to reappear, because Dex was about to say _fffffuuck the LAX bros_ as a completely conditioned, Pavlov doggian response.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Nursey says, squeezing Dex’s shoulder before he sits down. It’s kind of weird but Dex also never wants him to stop ever. “Drink line was crazy and a couple of my old teachers from Andover are here.”

Dex shoots him a smile and forgets that they are at a social event with other people for a second. “Did they recognize you out of your Star Trek shirt?”

Nursey scowls at him and says “shut up! You have seen _one_ photograph!” but Dex can see the smile in the crinkles around the corners of his eyes. He laughs and tips back in his chair, and Nursey fixes him with one of those looks Dex has seen on his face too many times this weekend to be a fleeting notion.

He can tell the drunk guy is judging him again, but he doesn’t have time to think on it because some official looking lady in glasses is heading towards an all-glass podium and Nursey is turning to look at him, mouths forming the words _this is it_.

The lady starts talking about the tradition of the award and all the famous dead dudes who have gotten it in the past, and Dex leans a little closer to bump their shoulders together.

“You nervous?” he asks, ducking his head to catch Nursey’s eye.

Nursey gets a fraction of an inch closer, and it feels like a whole lot more. “About this?” Either Dex is having a stroke, or Nursey just looked at his mouth. “Or about you?”

_“Please join me in congratulating this year’s winner, Derek Malik Nurse with his poem ‘Freckles Deconstructed’!”_

**10:48**

“I don’t know,” Nursey says through a mouthful of fries, “it’s kinda a lot smaller than I thought it would be?”

They’re sitting in one of the many greasy fast food diners that’s open this late, but Dex insists they have to get out of there in half an hour otherwise they’ll be those assholes that kept the staff from closing early. Nursey called him a sensitive country boy, and Dex pushed him into a puddle.

“Fuck off,” Dex says amicably, looking for something to wipe his greasy fingers on as Nursey rubs them all over his $200 three-piece, “don’t you get a shit ton of money too?”

Nursey shrugs and rubs at the plaque on the statuette that has his name embossed over the front. He dropped the thing approximately twenty-seconds after they’d left the banquet hall, and Dex made him save the piece that broke off to glue back on later. (“It gives it character, Poindexter!”, “You are literally an idiot”).

“Thought about getting Chowder sharks tickets. Maybe giving the rest to Bitty for baking supplies, god knows we owe him.”

“Sure,” Dex says, taking a sip of his milkshake and glancing tentatively at Nursey out of the corner of his eye.

“So, uh,” he settles for wiping his hand on the receipt from the little coffee hut Nursey insisted on stopping at before they ate, “you ever gonna let me read that poem?”

“No,” Nursey says almost right away, looking at him with what Dex might say was guilt if he didn’t know any better, “I mean. Why? You hate literally all poetry.”

“That’s just not fair,” Dex smiles, stretching back in the book, “whose woods are these, I think I know–“

Nursey lets out a groan and launches himself across the booth, slapping his horrible, greasy hand over Dex’s mouth. It’s kind of gross, there’s definitely a bunch of oil on his upper lip that will probably result in a very unattractive row of pimples, but all Dex can focus on is the brilliant smile on Nursey’s face when he says, “Nuh-uh, not in my city, Poindexter.”

Dex closes his hand around Nursey’s wrist, and it comes away from his mouth pretty easy. He’s reminded of the other night, of talking about everything and anything and never wanting it to end.

Dex opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. He does not let go of Nursey’s wrist. “I mean… you’re _never_ going to let me read it?”

Nursey does not try to reclaim is wrist. “Are you really sure you want to?”

There is definitely grease on Dex’s upper lip, he was definitely sweating through Nursey’s dress jacket earlier, and he’s pretty sure his mouth is going to taste like ketchup and hot dog relish, but none of it’s a good enough reason not to lean forward and kiss Nursey on the mouth. Nursey melts into it like absolutely nothing in the world could be more comfortable, and Dex inexplicably starts to laugh.

“Stop it,” Nursey mumbles against his mouth, tugging him closer by his tie, “m’trying to kiss you.”

“Sorry,” Dex smiles, curving a hand around Nursey’s neck and pressing their foreheads together, “it’s just…. _Freckles Deconstructed_?”

“Oh my god, shut up!” Nursey says, his voice almost shrill as he ducks his head and brings their lips together again.

Dex likes that – that he can laugh and laugh and taste like ketchup and relish, and Nursey won’t ever stop pulling him back in.


End file.
